Author: joenovara

The phone rings at the rectory. Fr. Cuomo: Good afternoon. St. Peter’s. Mrs. Cuomo: Franky, how you doing? Fr. Cuomo: Ma, when you call me Franky I know you want something. Mrs. Cuomo: What? You want me to call my son the Reverend Father Francis Cuomo? Fr. Cuomo: What’s up? Mrs. Cuomo: My cousin Tony… … Continue reading I No Killa Nobody

I’ve seen her walk by my beach lately. Probably a neighbor. Not many Lake Michigan regulars after Labor Day. She looks like Barbie would look, thirty-five years later, with a little extra ballast to counterweight her formidable bowsprit. I don’t know if you believe me or not, but I’m not a dirty old man. I … Continue reading Barbie+

Supporting a child's dreams? I’m chilled. The rink is never warm. Even though I bundle up with thermals and fleece and down jackets, I’m always cold just sitting here in the penetrating cold. But Carly in her tights and workout dress looks perfectly comfortable. Why shouldn’t she? She’s been doing warm ups for twenty minutes … Continue reading The Trailing Parent

I took a ‘roots’ trip through my old neighborhood a while back. I paused in front of the A.L. Holmes grade school. It wasn’t new when my mother went there 100 years ago. And it was older yet when I went there 75 years ago and played football on the front lawn and baseball in … Continue reading Old School Names

Martin strolled through the resort. That’s what it was called, a resort, but actually it’s a trailer park…a nice trailer park, for sure, on a canal to the Gulf but, most importantly, it gets him under the soothing southern sun after months of snow-blown Michigan. Down to his T-shirt to open his ‘fifth wheel,’ he … Continue reading One Downsmanship

She leaned on the door frame to his office, lingering, reluctant to leave. Matt studied her. Different now from their discussion a few minutes ago on the flyer she had asked him to design. He’d worked with Julia for years saying ‘hi’ in the hallways, in cafeteria clutches, on projects. But they had never slid … Continue reading A Quick Spark and Out

Did you ever walk into a room, maybe in an abandoned house, and feel a buzz, a kind of ‘ohmmm’? That’s what I felt standing in the middle of the Greek temple in Segesta. No roof. Fluted columns on all four sides, pointing up and out as much as around. A holy space, a launch … Continue reading In Search of the Buzz

Writers are counseled to avoid mixing metaphors. But becoming a grand-dad is to step into a swamp of cross-winds. Here are some of the similes, aphorisms and clichés that have helped me re-connect with my progeny-once-removed after months of Covid isolation. 1. My grandkids are not water barrels anxiously waiting for the steady drip of … Continue reading Mixed Grampa Metaphors

Then and Now I study the part in the auburn hair of a taut young woman heading for the beach. The Riviera Versilia. She’ll disrobe in the transept formed by the aisle of beach chairs and the Tirennian Sea. Stretching out on the canvas altar, she’ll arch her back, baring her breast to her scorching … Continue reading Locked in, Tuscany…Locked Down, Kalamazoo

“Hey! I found a bulldozer on the internet!” I exclaim to my buddy Spalding. “And it’s free. We just have to go pick it up in Nebraska.” “What you mean WE?” Spalding mutters. To someone who doesn’t know him, Spalding’s reply would seem to imply a certain reluctance to drive across four states with his … Continue reading Just Enough to Get Home